Robots are known which automatically cut up a conductive wire into portions of given lengths corresponding to a set of wires required for fitting to a machine or apparatus or to a portion thereof, said robot automatically crimping an electrical connector portion or "wire terminal" on each wire end. Various different shapes of wire terminal are suitable, for example a pin, a sleeve, a tongue with curled-over edges, etc.
Robots are also known which, after they have cut the wires and have crimped wire terminals on the ends thereof, are capable of individually inserting each wire terminal into a respective slot in an insulating housing in order to build up a connector, or are capable of individually connecting each wire terminal to a respective mating "component terminal" forming a part of a terminal block of an electrical component, e.g. a thermostat, a timer, a sensor, a programmer, etc.
French patent application 86/16.777 (C. Ricard) describes a method and apparatus for automatically taking the wire terminals crimped on conductive wires and connecting them to a set of electrical components by means of a pallet on which the components of a machine are mounted, which pallet is itself mounted on a moving table which is displaceable along two axes relative to a carriage which is displaceable along a third axis, said carriage carrying a moving clamp which individually grasps each wire terminal and which fits it to a component terminal or which engages it in a slot of an insulating housing.
When the pallet carries a large number of components, or when terminal blocks have a large number of terminals, or when the insulating housings include a large number of slots, or when a single component includes a plurality of terminals or slots, then a quantity of conductive wires rapidly builds up in front of the component terminals or insulating housings and constitutes a cluster of wires criss-crossing in all directions, such that new wire terminals conveyed by the moving clamp have difficulty in passing through said cluster of wires, thereby denying access to some of the component terminals or to some of the slots.
The object of the invention is to provide a method and apparatus for solving this problem.